Chapter 11 - Four Minutes
Four minutes.
The number changed everything.
People who had spent hours lying began telling the truth very quickly.
Thomas hit the upload key.
The progress bar moved to two percent.
Then stopped.
“Network severed.”
Luca ran to the wall panel.
“Fiber line is dead.”
Damien pulled out his phone.
“No signal.”
Isabella looked toward the ceiling.
“Eleanor installed a Faraday cutoff in the old archive.”
Vittorio stared at her.
“You knew?”
“I knew Enzo had one. I did not know she reactivated it.”
The security voice returned.
“Three minutes, thirty seconds.”
Emma looked at the microfilm.
“What happens at zero?”
Thomas answered without looking up.
“Thermite charge in the archive wall.”
Alexander’s face hardened.
“You stored evidence beside an incinerator?”
“My father believed in redundancy,” Vittorio said grimly.
“Your father believed in melodrama.”
Damien grabbed the scanner.
“Can we move it?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Data is partially decrypted in volatile memory. Pull power and we lose the index.”
Emma looked at the progress bar.
“Can we physically connect to the outside network?”
Luca pointed toward the service corridor.
“Main telecom trunk runs through the old wine cellar.”
“How far?”
“Two floors down.”
Alexander was already moving.
Damien went with him.
Vittorio started after them.
Alexander turned.
“Stay with Emma.”
Vittorio’s expression flashed.
“I am not eighty.”
“No. You are the man who knows where the manual purge switch is.”
Vittorio stopped.
Then nodded.
“Behind Enzo’s portrait upstairs.”
Isabella looked at him.
“That switch only delays the purge sixty seconds.”
“I know.”
He ran.
The clock announced three minutes.
Emma stood beside Thomas as he worked.
Her abdomen tightened again.
This one hurt.
She gripped the desk.
Thomas looked over.
“Emma?”
“I’m fine.”
“That sentence is hereditary in our family and equally useless every time.”
Despite everything, she almost laughed.
Then another contraction hit.
Her breath left her.
Isabella moved beside her.
“Sit.”
Emma glared at her.
“Do not start mothering me now.”
Isabella’s face softened with pain.
“I was never very good at it when I had the chance.”
The security voice announced two minutes, thirty seconds.
A loud clang came from below.
Alexander’s voice crackled through Luca’s radio.
“Cable found.”
Thomas shouted into it.
“Patch blue pair to terminal line B!”
Static.
Then Damien’s voice.
“There are six blue pairs.”
Thomas closed his eyes.
“Of course there are.”
Emma looked at the old building schematic pinned inside the desk door.
Color codes.
She saw a handwritten note beside a telecom symbol.
R.C. — blue/white stripe.
Her mother’s initials.
“Blue with white stripe.”
Thomas turned.
“What?”
“Mom marked it.”
He grabbed the radio.
“Blue-white stripe!”
A beat.
Then the terminal chirped.
Network connected.
Upload resumed.
Twelve percent.
Twenty.
The security voice said two minutes.
Footsteps thundered above them.
Vittorio appeared at the doorway.
“Manual delay engaged.”
The countdown paused.
Then reset.
“Three minutes remaining.”
Isabella exhaled.
“Sixty seconds.”
Upload forty-one percent.
Emma pressed both hands to the desk as another contraction rolled through her.
This one lasted longer.
Warmth spread down her legs.
She froze.
Isabella looked down.
Then at Emma.
“Oh.”
Emma’s heart stopped.
“No.”
Thomas stared.
“Was that—”
“My water.”
The room went silent for exactly half a second.
Then everyone started talking at once.
Emma shouted, “Nobody stops the upload.”
Isabella grabbed a chair.
Thomas called Dr. Nolan.
Vittorio stood completely useless for the first time in his adult life.
The progress bar reached sixty percent.
A gunshot cracked from the hallway.
Everyone froze.
Eleanor Voss stepped into the library.
She was seventy, immaculate, and holding a small pistol with both hands.
Smoke curled from the ceiling where she had fired a warning shot.
“Step away from the terminal.”
Vittorio’s face went cold.
“Eleanor.”
She smiled.
“You always were slow at the final page.”
Upload seventy-two percent.
Eleanor pointed the gun at the computer.
Emma looked at the progress bar.
Then at the woman.
“You tracked me.”
“Yes.”
“You forged the paternity report.”
“Yes.”
“You told Damien the trust would erase him.”
Eleanor’s smile widened.
“He was very easy to motivate.”
Damien appeared silently in the hallway behind her.
Emma saw him.
Eleanor did not.
Upload eighty-one percent.
Eleanor tightened her grip.
“Your mother should have burned those ledgers when she had the chance.”
Emma’s body clenched with another contraction.
She gasped.
Eleanor’s eyes flicked toward her.
Damien moved.
He struck Eleanor’s wrist.
The gun fired into the ceiling.
Alexander came through the opposite doorway and pulled Emma behind the stone fireplace.
Luca tackled Eleanor.
The pistol slid across the floor.
Upload ninety-three percent.
The security system announced:
“Thirty seconds.”
Thomas stared at the screen.
Ninety-six.
Ninety-seven.
Ninety-eight.
Eleanor laughed from the floor.
“You think the ledger is the evidence?”
Thomas looked at her.
She smiled through split lipstick.
“The ledger is the map.”
Upload ninety-nine percent.
“The evidence is under Saint Michael’s.”
The progress bar hit one hundred.
UPLOAD COMPLETE.
At the same instant, the archive wall erupted in white heat.
Alexander covered Emma as glass shattered across the library.
And Emma screamed—not from fear.
May you like
From the contraction that finally dropped her to her knees.
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